Trade name | Kernel |
---|---|
Company type | Private |
Founded | 2016; 8 years ago (2016) |
Founder | Bryan Johnson |
Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Website | kernel |
HI, LLC, doing business as Kernel, is an American company that has developed a non-invasive neuroimaging technology. It is a privately held company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company was founded in 2016 by Bryan Johnson.
History
Johnson founded Kernel in 2016 with a $54 million investment and began researching neuroprosthetics, devices implanted into the brain that mimic, substitute, or assist brain functions.
In May 2020, Kernel introduced two brain-activity monitoring devices, Flux and Flow. The Flow device can both see and record brain activity.
Kernel also introduced "Sound ID," a software that can tell what speech or song a person is listening to just from brain data. The company was featured in the 2020 documentary, I Am Human, about brain–machine interfaces. Kernel raised $53 million in 2020.
Kernel Flow
Kernel Flow is a wearable time-domain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (TD-fNIRS) system. fNIRs uses infrared light to measure changes in the oxygenation of blood, which is a proxy for neural activity. Kernel Flow can achieve a 200 Hz sampling rate. The spatial resolution of f-NIRS is strongly limited by scattering, with most existing f-NIRS systems having resolutions > 2 cm.
Operations
Kernel plans to read and write the underlying functions of the brain.
As of 2019, the company is researching neurological diseases and dysfunctions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, depression and anxiety. Kernel is one of several companies researching links between the human brain and computer interfaces, including Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, Synchron, and Facebook. Kernel also offers neuroscience as a service to scientists and businesses, conducting subject testing at their office.
References
- ^ "A Neuroscience Startup Uses Helmets to Measure Brain Activity". Bloomberg.com. 5 May 2020. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
- Mannes, John (2016-10-20). "Bryan Johnson Invests $100 Million In Kernel To Unlock The Power Of The Human Brain". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
- ^ Hoyle, Ben. "Secret team invent helmet to read the mind". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
- Statt, Nick (2017-02-22). "Kernel Is Trying To Hack The Human Brain - But Neuroscience Has A Long Way To Go". The Verge. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
- Johnson, Bryan (2017-02-22). "Kernel Acquires KRS to Build Next-Generation Neural Interfaces". Medium. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
- "Brain-Machine Interfaces Could Give Us All Superpowers". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2020-07-10.
- "Kernel raises $53 million to bring neuroscience insights to businesses". VentureBeat. 2020-07-09. Retrieved 2020-07-10.
- Ban, Han Y.; Barrett, Geoffry M.; Borisevich, Alex; Chaturvedi, Ashutosh; Dahle, Jacob L.; Dehghani, Hamid; DoValle, Bruno; Dubois, Julien; Field, Ryan; Gopalakrishnan, Viswanath; Gundran, Andrew; Henninger, Michael; Ho, Wilson C.; Hughes, Howard D.; Jin, Rong; Kates-Harbeck, Julian; Landy, Thanh; Lara, Antonio H.; Leggiero, Michael; Lerner, Gabriel; M. Aghajan, Zahra; Moon, Michael; Ojeda, Alejandro; Olvera, Isai; Ozturk, Meric; Park, Sangyong; Patel, Milin J.; Perdue, Katherine L.; Poon, Wing; Sheldon, Zachary P.; Siepser, Benjamin; Sorgenfrei, Sebastian; Sun, Nathan; Szczepanski, Victor; Zhang, Mary; Zhu, Zhenye (2021-03-05). "Kernel Flow: A high channel count scalable TD-fNIRS system". In Mohseni, Hooman (ed.). Integrated Sensors for Biological and Neural Sensing. Vol. 11663. p. 23. Bibcode:2021SPIE11663E..0BB. doi:10.1117/12.2582888. ISBN 9781510641617. S2CID 233784807. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
- von Lühmann, Alexander; Zheng, Yilei; Ortega-Martinez, Antonio; Kiran, Swathi; Somers, David C.; Cronin-Golomb, Alice; Awad, Louis N.; Ellis, Terry D.; Boas, David A.; Yücel, Meryem A. (June 2021). "Toward Neuroscience of the Everyday World (NEW) using functional near-infrared spectroscopy". Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering. 18: 100272. doi:10.1016/j.cobme.2021.100272. PMC 7943029. PMID 33709044.
- ^ Kim, Meri (1 April 2021). "Shedding Light on the Human Brain". OSA Optics and Photonics News. 32 (4): 26. Bibcode:2021OptPN..32d..26K. doi:10.1364/OPN.32.4.000026. S2CID 233531121. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
- Johnson, Bryan (2016-10-12). "The Combination of Human and Artificial Intelligence Will Define Humanity's Future". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
- Metz, Cade (2017-03-31). "Elon Musk Isn't The Only One Trying To Computerize Your Brain". Wired. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
- Johnson, Bryan (2017-02-22). "Kernel Acquires KRS to Build Next-Generation Neural Interfaces". Medium. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
- Regalado, Antonio (2017-03-16). "The Entrepreneur With The $100 Million Plan To Link Brains To Computers". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2017-04-04.